Equality Bill

Indeed. What on earth would be wrong with that? It seems to me that the people who are truly racist and sexism see everything in terms of race and gender, rather than those of us who just wish people to be recruited entirely on merit. Batook Pandya, the director of Bristol-based charity Support Against Racist Incidents, put it perfectly when he said on the subject of fire service open days aimed at only ethnic minority recruits:""None of these open days should have been closed to white communities. I couldn't give two hoots if they are white, black, Asian, male or female—they should simply be the best person for the job."" The Bill introduces the concept of protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex and sexual orientation. "Why stop there?" someone might ask. There are other people and possible items for such categories. Lots of people say that they are discriminated against in the workplace because of their weight, hair colour or the fact that they are bald—that has not always been a problem in my party. If people are discriminated against for all those factors, why are they not included in the Bill? Why not just go for a simplistic kind of equality? Perhaps the Solicitor-General in summing up will explain how much of the population is not covered by the protected groups. If in broad, estimated terms, 50 per cent. of the population are women, 10 per cent. are not white, 10 per cent. are homosexual, 20 per cent. are over 65, and 17 per cent. are disabled—I admit that a few of them will have more than one characteristic—there will not be many people who are not covered by the Bill. In fact, we will have a new minority: white, heterosexual men with no disability at all. That will be the only minority left that is not covered by the Bill. The Bill allows positive action in recruitment where any two candidates are as qualified as each other. That is complete nonsense. First, no two candidates are ever exactly the same, and the Bill therefore tries to introduce a scenario that we would only usually expect to hear in a primary school playground. Indeed, my six-year-old son is the only person who ever raises impossible hypotheticals with me, but I can now tell him that the Leader of the House has joined him in that quest. However, for the purposes of the argument, I will humour the Government and accept that that impossible scenario could happen. The Leader of the House claimed that positive action provision could only be invoked if two candidates were both equally the best. If the person—perhaps a woman, someone from an ethnic minority, or a male going for a job at a primary school, as in the case raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow)—is genuinely the equal-best candidate, given that the employer has got to pick one or the other, perhaps the Government can explain which law currently in place prevents them from picking the one who is from the minority group. If they are genuinely joint-best candidates, one or other of them will be picked. This is a pointless solution.